Most years, it’s possible to boil down the conversation preceding Cannes to a single simple question: Who’s going to be here? The world’s most prestigious film festival, unfolding over a dozen days against the sunbaked splendor of the French Riviera, can sometimes feel (or at least look) like a giant, glamorous,…

According to Deadline, Amazon has picked up a four-hour miniseries called Cortes about Hernan Cortes, the Spanish conquistador who helped dismantle the Aztec Empire and won Mexico for Spain. The series comes from Steven Spielberg and Amblin Television, and though the current incarnation comes from Spielberg’s …

Darren Aronofsky’s preoccupation with paranoid, physically grotesque searches for meaning—a curious mix of deep-think and makeup effects that goes back to his black-and-white debut feature, Pi—grimly paints humanity as a species defined by obsessions, addictions, delusions, and self-destruction, its only prophets…

Not a whole lot actually happens in the teaser trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! that Paramount uploaded onto YouTube yesterday, but anyone who’s seen Repulsion can tell you that there’s plenty of horror to be gleaned from a woman trapped in an empty house. And besides, the horror here is all in the audio, which…

The Coen brothers’ 2007 film No Country For Old Men is unlike the traditional westerns it pays homage to. The good guy gets shot, the bad guy gets away, and the audience is left feeling uneasy about the whole experience. Perhaps the most non-traditional moment of the entire film is its seemingly unrelated closing…

Many actors try their hand at directing, but few can match the degree of success—on both sides of the camera—that Sean Penn has achieved. Films like The Pledge(2001) and Into The Wild(2007) demonstrate the same intelligence, sensitivity, and power that Penn invests in his Oscar-winningperformances. He occasionally…

Plot is never the best part of a Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. It’s always some mumbo jumbo about maritime curses, lost treasure, and seafaring ghosts—and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth entry in this long-running series adapted from a Disneyland ride, is in no way different. Returning to…

Due to some recent events, Johnny Depp isn’t necessarily the beloved star that he was a few months ago, so the world might not be quite ready to see him drunkenly swagger around as a pirate just yet. Appropriately enough, then, this first teaser for Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (or POTC:DMTNT for…

It looks like Javier Bardem is going to be the latest A-list celebrity to join the Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe. The 47-year-old Spanish actor is apparently in talks to “star as Frankenstein” in a spate of shared-universe films based upon the studio’s classic pantheon of monsters, according to Variety. And…

Primeris The A.V. Club’s ongoing series of beginners’ guides to pop culture’s most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This installment: Pedro Almodóvar, one of the most original and acclaimed directors working today.

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flop, critical failure, or lack a substantial cult following.

Despite emerging from America’s war on drugs as a billionaire gangster antihero, the closest that Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has ever come to getting a major film treatment was the Vinnie Chase vehicle Medellin on Entourage. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the late Escobar is finally getting his…

It looks like Sean Penn wants a piece of the Taken pie. Taking a page directly from the book of Liam Neeson, Penn is teaming up with director Pierre Morel for The Gunman, which will see him playing a man who must travel the world and make use of his special skills in order to save a loved one. Also joining Sean Penn…

Despite Penelope Cruz being one of the few bright spots of the last Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, it seems Johnny Depp enjoyed hearing stories about her cool significant other so much, he decided he’d rather have Javier Bardem come aboard the next installment. Left without a female lead to stand around and deal with…

Is there any proof that Javier Bardem isn’t really an immortal supervillain who travels the world adopting weird affectations and coming up with wacky schemes? It just seems suspicious that the same guy can play a uniquely weird villain in No Country For Old Men, Eat Pray Love, and Skyfall without having some kind of…